Guwahati:In the face rising cases of alcohol abuse among its personnel has raised concern, the Border Security Force (BSF), Guwahati Frontier today launched a week-long alcohol de-addiction programme on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti at its headquarter here in association with Alcohol Anonymous.
The de-addiction programme has been attended by 15 Officers and 80 personnel of the BSF.
Inaugurating the programme , S K Srivastava, Inspector General Guwahati Frontier said “our approach to treating substance abuse tends to be old-fashioned, and now we want to use modern medicine for detoxification with help of our friends in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Another problem is an over reliance on hospitalization and in-patient rehabilitation facilities, rather than the outpatient care that characterizes most civilian addiction treatment.
He also said that BSF proposes to use the latter, with use of more peer help.”
He added that BSF has plans to have own counselors who with better training, with help from Alcoholics Anonymous would prepare material for training the BSF personnel.
He added that BSF would integrate prevention and treatment efforts more into primary health care and do more to protect identity of those seeking help in view of reduce the stigma attached to it.
C R Belwa , DIG BSF said , “Historically alcohol used to be part of military culture. Troops use it for relieving stress of isolation from family life as well as to ward of the chill in high altitude areas like J&K. But now alcohol use and misuse among troops has become almost a “public health crisis”. About one percent of active-duty service members are reported to be engaged in heavy drinking i.e. five or more drinks a day as a regular practice.”
“In BSF set-up programs and policies have not been evolved to effectively address alcohol abuse. Better care for service members and their families is hampered by inadequate prevention strategies, staffing shortages, lack of coverage for services that are proved to work, and stigma associated with these disorders,” he added.